Friday, July 28, 2017

I've been on a campaign lately to update and modify the signage at Ascension. As a relative newcomer, I need to pay attention to details my eyes won't be noticing as the years pass. The more times I walk by the directory sign inside the Yarmouth Rd. entrance, the more likely I won't notice that where it once read "DIRECTORY", it now says "DIRECTO." The RY are missing and I don't know how long it's been that way. But I do suspect that it doesn't seem to bother anyone else the way it bothers me. Last week, as I was obsessing over all the signage that needs work inside our building, I exited the main doors and noticed a "No Parking" sign I had never seen before. There is was, right in front of me in all its glory! (The streaks you see are rust.)

Argh! I've been at Ascension for a year and was seeing it for the first time. I snapped a picture and shared it with a few people in the office. "Have you ever seen this sign before?" I asked. Not a one of them had ever laid eyes on it, and yet every time we leave the building, it's right there in our church circle-driveway. There's no way you could miss it. But, of course, everyone has. Now, I'm not pointing this out to disparage our property manager or property committee. They are amazing and keep the church in top-top shape. My point is how we can become blind to stuff that's right in front of us after it becomes so commonplace that we don't even notice it.What's true for signage around the church is true for so much more. The longer we're a part of an organization, a system, a culture, the less we question how it works. That's why we need truth-seers.This is what prophets did for God's people in the Scriptures. When the people fell away from God's ways and were swept up in the ways of the world, the prophets gave them a verbal smack upside the head, calling them to see the truth. God still sends us prophets today. If we're wise enough to listen to them, they will challenge us to become more than we are.Lately, I've become especially sensitive to the word we use to describe the way we worship in the church as "traditional." I've used it for years to describe liturgical worship that follows the book, with "traditional" hymns, and "traditional" organ music. But truth-seers have challenged me to question the use of that word. How can I say that the way we worship in my white, middle-class, English-speaking, North American Lutheran congregation is "traditional?" That may be my tradition, but it is not the tradition for most of the Lutherans who are worshiping God on any given Sunday morning. Truth-seers have helped me to expand my vision in a way that includes those I hadn't considered when I bought into a certain standard for what is traditional Lutheran worship.Truth-seers are usually outsiders. They're people who aren't a part of the dominant group. After all, when the system is working for you, you have no need to question it. This may seem relatively harmless when we're talking about local customs and preferences, but it quickly becomes dangerous when we're making assumptions about who's in and who's out. Then, in our blindness, we're failing to see injustice. It becomes so much a part of our lives that we don't even realize it exists. I've only been able to see this with the help of the truth-seers God has placed in my life.Without the voices of truth-seers, I shudder to think of how much worse things might be than they are. Whenever I want to hide my head in the sand and ignore injustice in the world around me, I thank God for the annoying truth-seers who regularly challenge my false assumptions, expose my blind spots, and confront me with the reality of a faded, rusty sign that's just gotta go.

Sunday, July 23, 2017

I’ve never been one to lie about my age. I know it’s
just a number and doesn’t have anything to do with my ability. What I may lack
in stamina these days, I more than make up for in experience. I’m cool with being
a woman who just began serving in a challenging new call at a time when most of
my peers are retiring. The way I see it, I’m in my prime, so it’s full steam
ahead.

That means I need to be a part of the 21st century. I do my best to keep
up on the latest books they’re reading in seminary. I participate in social
media and am technologically aware. I’m always pushing myself to think about
what’s next and don’t wring my hands over the loss of the good old days, which,
for me, where never really all that good anyway.

Despite all
of that, on a regular basis, I’m reminded that I grew up in a different time.
No matter how hard I try to remember that these days we record things, we don’t tape
them, I still refer to taping my favorite shows on T.V. When I’m working at the
keyboard on my computer, I often still find myself leaving two spaces after a
period. When I ask someone to roll down their car window, I make a cranking
motion in the air. None of these are things that a 30-year-old would think of
doing, but I take consolation in the fact that at least I’m aware of it.

I’m always
resisting the urge to return to my default settings. As I age, this is becoming more and more challenging. I can’t deny the fact that physically I’m not at all the
person I once was. Mentally, I’m not as quick. It happens to all of us as we
age and it can’t be avoided. But refusing to revert back to the world I grew up in during the 1960s is a choice. I’m convinced that for as long as I’m able to
resist my default settings, I’ve still got it.

About Me

Nancy is an ordained pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She serves at Ascension Lutheran Church in Towson, Maryland. Nancy grew up in Hamilton, Ohio, and then served time at Bowling Green State University, before moving on to Trinity Seminary in Columbus. Starting out in North Dakota, she then returned to Ohio and served churches there before landing in North Carolina, where she served at two different congregations in Charlotte. She was also on the bishop's staff and earned a PhD from Pitt during her spare time in the area of religion and education. She considers herself an educator who happens to be a pastor and it makes a difference in how she does ministry. She is a divorce survivor, and the mother of two artsy-fartsy children who abandoned her when they became adults. Now she shares a home with Father Guido Sarducci, her tuxedo cat.